


get my name stitched on your lips

by intybus



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Drunkenness, Fluff, M/M, That's it, brief instance of John Silver being a mess, brief instance of internalized homophobia, they call each other by their forenames
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-19 03:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13695840
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intybus/pseuds/intybus
Summary: The first time it happens, it’s just a slip of the tongue.(or: three times Flint calls Silver "John", and one time Silver (finally!!!) calls him "James")





	get my name stitched on your lips

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry i'm a sap!!!  
> (i'm also sorry for any mistake you'll find in this!!)
> 
> also: this is set from late-ish s3 to pre 401

i.

The first time it happens, it’s just a slip of the tongue.

Silver is slumped over his chair, calmly waving back and forth on the edge of slumber. Flint has a very pleasant voice, he thinks and then the voice stops. He opens his eyes.

The feeling that something between them has been unsettled doesn’t really catch on with him until his drowsy stare finds Flint’s face, just in time to witness the complete obliteration of any last crumb of intelligible human emotion from it. Flint is still, he is blank. What the fuck did I do, Silver thinks, sitting up straighter. He scrambles through the fog in his mind, looking back at the last few minutes—

Then it comes to him, accompanied by a small wave of relief and by a sharp pang of— something. It’s all Flint’s own doing. Silver hears the echo of his voice snarl back at him again: “You can’t be serious. Tell me you did not just fall asleep,” Flint had said. “John!”

“I,” Silver says now. Flint is measuring him all tense muscles and careful eyes, like Silver is a wild animal, unpredictable. Like he is an enemy Flint must be wary about. Which is. Exactly what Silver was looking for when he started this partnership, he has to remind himself. For Flint to fear him enough to respect him—or something. He doesn’t really remember it, he doesn’t really like it.

He honestly thinks the man is overreacting. It’s just a fucking name, it doesn’t mean anything. He decides to act like he hasn’t noticed. “I was merely resting my eyes”.

Flint answers after a pause. “I heard snoring”.

“That’s preposterous!”

“Do you want me to teach you or not?” Flint says, stabbing a finger over the map they splayed between them.

“I asked you to, haven’t I? Now don’t be petty and go on”.

Flint glares at him but starts rambling again about winds and routes and many other pedantries. Silver finds it harder than usual to keep his thoughts still.

 

ii.

The second time it happens, it’s deliberate on Flint’s part. Silver is the only one taken aback by it.

Flint fallows him and says, “John, are you alright?”

Silver is trying to exhale around the pain but then he hears it, and his breath catches in his throat. “Fuck,” he says, feeling angry. “Fine”.

He has done his best to ignore the ache in his stump all morning, but now he needs five minutes alone so he can recollect. Flint is either clueless or merciless, he just stands there watching as he leans heavily against the wooden wall of the Walrus.

Silver grits his teeth. “Do you need something?”

“John,” Flint steps closer, lowers his voice. Silver sees right through him: he is trying to make him feel weak. “Mr. Howell says you should consider the idea of using a crutch, at least for—“

“What the fuck do you know about what Howell says?” Silver pushes off the wall, welcoming the sting of pain. He knows he can bear it, he is not helpless. He stares at Flint with fire in his eyes.

“He asked me to talk to you, he thinks—“

“He should mind his own fucking business”.

“John—“

“Stop that,” Silver snarls. Flint shuts his mouth, teeth snapping, jaw flitching with the force of it.

The silence feels too tight, as it presses against Silver’s body, as it closes itself around his throat. He regrets his harshness immediately. “I ’d like to be alone if you don’t mind,” he says, averting Flint’s eyes in favor of his boots. He watches them linger for just a second. He watches them leave.

 

A few hours later, when he feels less clouded, Silver goes looking for Flint. He finds him reading in his cabin. Flint doesn’t look up as Silver approaches, even though the thud of his iron leg against the floor must have given away his presence.

Silver feels mildly nauseous, he can’t remember the last time he did anything like this. The steps that haul him toward Flint are intentionally slow. Maybe if he takes long enough something will come up, sparing him the discomfort to go through with this shitty resolution. A mutiny, the Royal Navy, a surprise attack from a sea monster—he’ll take anything.

He sighs when he reaches Flint’s desk undisturbed. He waits for Flint to look up from his fucking book, but the bastard won’t budge. Silver drums his fingers on the desk and clears his throat. “Hi,” he says lamely.

Flint reacts very slowly. Silver could swear he feels his beard grow a few inches in each lapse of time separating an action from the next. Flint closes the book, keeping an index between the pages. He leans back in his chair. He looks up at him. He says, “Hi”. Then he waits.

“I,” Silver says, closing his fingers into a fist, “came to apologize”.

Flint's whole composure shifts. Silver see the light in his eyes flicker with surprise. He sees Flint’s chest rise with a breath, lips parted and ready to deliver words Silver doesn’t really want to listen to. He’s here to say his part and walk away, conscience clean and head clear from this new spell Flint has put on him. He says, “I know you wanted to help. It’s just that. I’m”.

“Listen,” Flint says, filling the silence. “I didn’t mean to—“

“I’m just here to say thank you,” Silver says, then frowns because the words slipped out of him unchecked and he didn’t really come here for that. Well, at least he thinks he didn’t.

Flint nods once. “Alright. You’re welcome,” he says.

Silver waits for him to add John at the end because it feels appropriate: he came in here and apologized and said thank you. Flint doesn’t do it. Which is. Okay.

 

After, Flint goes back to calling him Silver. Which is okay. Not a big deal. He has called him Silver before, for months, in fact, and it never sounded wrong. And even now, it doesn’t exactly sound wrong, it just sound—confusing. The thing that’s bugging him is that he doesn’t understand why Flint started calling him that and then stopped. Is there even a reasoning behind it that he can hope to unveil?

Flint is not acting any different towards him, he’s not acting angry, so this is not some sort of weird punishment. He keeps looking at him with does razor-sharp eyes clear of any threat. He just stops calling him John.

Which is. Okay.

 

iii.

The third time it’s deliberate too, but on Silver’s part.

He is sitting on a rock, crutch resting against the side of his thigh, breath rattling out of him in short uneven puffs, as he rubs his forehead with the cloth Flint handed to him. He is bruised and exhausted and inexplicably content. “Well,” he pants, “how did I do?”

Flint grunts, bowing his head forward so he can wipe the sweat off of the back of his neck. “Could have done worse”.

“Is that your way of telling me there is a bright future as ruthless swordsman awaiting for me?”

“I’ve killed you in no less than seven different occasions”.

Silver smiles his best shit-eating grin, unbothered. “A pupil's failure is his master's”.

Flint glares at him, before throwing his sweaty, disgusting cloth directly at Silver's face. Silver is almost smothered to death by it. He rebels against its coils and tries very hard not to breathe while he does so. Everything around him suddenly smells like Flint and it should be gross and it is but it’s also—not. He feels the pull of something hot rushing through him and he thinks, Fuck.

“You’re a very vengeful man,” he says once he is free, his voice just a little bit hoarse.

Flint snorts as he reaches to pick up the crutch. Silver must have knocked it to the ground while fighting off the cloth. Flint places it carefully between them and says “I’ve been told”.

Silver looks at it, suddenly struck with a question. “Where did you get that?”

Flint shrugs. “I made it”.

“You made it,” Silver says, rolling the words on his tongue, attempting to catch their meaning.

“Is what I said”.

“For me?” It is a needless question, and Flint doesn’t bother to answer it.

Something fairly similar to panic climbs its way to Silver’s heart and claws at it. He knows it’s not panic because it doesn’t make him want to run away. He watches Flint’s hands: they are deadly things, stained with the blood of countless man, but now they manage to look almost vulnerable, as they fidget uneasily against no visible enemy. Somehow, in between all the slaughtering done and planned, those hands found the time to make a crutch. For Silver. “Thank you,” Silver says.

“It’s just a temporary solution,” Flint says. “I wasn’t sure you’d want to— but if you plan to keep using it, I think we should look for someone who knows what he’s doing and commission him something more solid”.

“This looks pretty solid to me. Thank you”.

“You don’t have to thank me. I’ve told you, I need you to stay alive, Silver”.

Silver sighs at that and before he can think better, he asks: “Why did you stop calling me John?”

Flint stills, it looks like he’s barely breathing. “I don’t want to overstep”.

“Overstep?” Silver sounds incredulous to his own ears. “It’s a name, it doesn’t mean anything,” he says, but it feels like a lie.

“Names always mean something. Doesn’t Long John Silver know that?”

He does know that. He wants to ask: what does John mean, then? What does Silver? And: what’s the difference between them? And: why is it relevant? What he says is: “I don’t mind it if. If you want to call me that. John I mean”.

“Alright,” Flint says, lips curling, “Good to know, John”.

“Alright,” John smiles back.

 

After that, he loses count of how many times Flint calls him John.

 

He thinks about the differences between Captain Flint and James McGraw. He knows Flint very well: knows how to handle him, where you can push him and where you’ll cut yourself if you try.

Of James McGraw he knows only one thing with certainty: he is in love with another man-- a man who was very different from anything John Silver is and was and will ever be.

 

i.

The first time it happens, John is quite drunk.

Flint has never seen him drunk before and only rarely he witnessed him drinking. He thought it had something to do with the need for control, with the will to maintain unshaken the carefully crafted persona John has to act out for the benefit of the men. And, even in the light of the new information he gained tonight, he still thinks there is some truth to that. But now he knows the main reason is another, much more trivial: John Silver can’t hold his liquor. An almost unforgivable blemish on the crown of a pirate king. Luckily, the privacy of John’s hut ensures that Flint is the only one allowed to see it.

There is a loud thud and when Flint lifts his eyes from the cup he is gripping, John is on the floor, an unfocused expression on his face, something suspended between bewilderment and outrage. “I fell off the chair,” he says, like he’s unable to make sense of the concept.

“Do you need a hand?” Flint asks, trying not to sound too amused.

“No,” John says, giving up his halfhearted struggle to climb back onto his chair, “but I wouldn’t mind a leg”.

Flint can’t help the bark of laughter that escapes from his throat at that.

John looks at him gloating, his lips curled lazily: a secret, shining and very pink, almost kept untold, only half buried beneath the dark forest of his beard. “You never laugh,” John says.

“I just did”. Flint doesn’t bother to tame the fondness in his own smile, he lets it seep right through. He doubts John, in his current condition, is present enough to pay any close attention to it. And even if he were, Flint thinks, in a couple of days they could be dead. “I think we’ve had enough for tonight. You should go to sleep. Big day tomorrow”.

John sighs theatrically and lets his head fall back on the seat of the chair. “Yeah, yeah. I know. We’re taking back Nassau. You’re boring”.

His neck is perfectly exposed before Flint’s eyes. It feels rather intimate, to be granted access to this ridiculous, unguarded side of him. Flint is starting to feel hazy from it.

John is still for a long stretch of time, during which Flint debates internally whether or not to kick at his shin to make sure he doesn’t fall asleep like this. Before he can make up his mind, John sighs again. “Give me that hand you were talking about,” he holds out one of his own, in a gesture that looks perfectly regal “I want to go get some rest”.

Flint helps him up a bit awkwardly and maneuvers him toward his cot. John slumps face down on it like a dead weight, before rolling on his back. “The boot,” he says, “Off”.

“Has his Majesty mistaken me for his personal valet?” Flint asks, smirking as he complies. His hands hover over the peg leg. “Do you want me to take this off too?”

The only tell that John is still awake, is the uneven sound of his breaths. Flint waits until he props himself up on elbows and says, “Yes”.

Flint reaches under the hem of John’s trousers and works quickly, carefully on the straps. He feels John’s eyes on him the whole time. He slips the peg off and places it on the floor, next to the cot. “Alright,” he says. “Are you comfortable now?”

John hums, still looking. His attention feels suddenly very sharp.

“I’m going, then”.

“Stay”.

Flint clenches and unclenches his fingers, he thinks maybe he too has had too much to drink. “I have to go back,” he says.

“No, come on. Everything is set. The Walrus can do without you for just one night,” John shifts to the side to make room on the cot. “Stay”.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea”. Flint looks at the ground. John doesn’t offer him a rebut, he just sighs and falls down, flat on his back again.

It is for the best. It is for the best, Flint thinks, but he is still pinned to the spot. He has faced death countless times, he knows how to be reckless. John pulls him in like a magnet, he lets it happen.

“Like this?” he asks, settling himself down on his side. It’s a close fit, knees brushing.

“Yes,” John says, triumph shining white on his teeth. “But take off your dirty boots, don’t be an animal”.

“You’re very demanding, you know that?” Flint mumbles as he tries to get up so he can fulfill John’s command, but then there is a hand on his chest, pressing him down.

“Wait”. John sits up and leans forward, reaching for Flint’s boots. It takes him a few try to successfully take them off. Victorious, he flops back. “See?” he says, “I can take care of you too”.

Flint’s breath flutters. “I know you can”.

“You always look after me. I’ve noticed. I want to take care of you too. I want to keep you safe,” John shifts closer, words falling hot almost against Flint’s cheek, then rolling down his whole body like a shiver. “When it starts, I’ll make sure to keep you both safe, I promise”.

Flint has lost his voice and all the air in his lungs. He knows what Madi means to John. He feels something tentative, hopeful beginning to flare inside his chest. It is both familiar and foreign, frightening and salvific. When he can speak again, he says, “I’d like for you to call me James. If you’re. Not uncomfortable with it”.

In the beats of silence that follow, Flint closes his eyes. He doesn’t think about John throwing him off of the cot, looking at him in disgust, telling him he’s got this all wrong. Those are irrational thoughts, not his own. He knows John better than that.

“James,” John says, and then all he can think about is his name on John’s lips.

“Yes”.

John presses a hand to his heart. “You’re James”.

“Yes”.

“And you want me”.

James swallows, looking for words that are not meaningless. Words soft and burning, robust and wide enough to hold the weight of his answer. He doesn’t find them but is heart is racing, and John knows how to listen. “James,” he says, moving closer still.

“Thank you,” James starts saying, but John kisses it off his lips and replaces it with his name. Again, and again, and again.


End file.
